This is the town of Rochefort, situated about 16 miles up the Charente river from the coast and Île d'Aix, our last port of call. Established between 1666 and 1670, this is where the French navy was built. To protect it several forts were built, including Fort Lupin on the south bank of the river
and Fort Boyard just outside the mouth of the Charente estuary; it took over 50 years to complete by which time it was redundant!
Although the Charente river is tidal and not very deep, large coasters regularly travel up and down it. We met one such large vessel which hailed from Cardiff. These coasters need to take great care not to run aground and to this end, at every bend in the river, there are leading lines or transits, lettered TT to AA, placed to help them navigate a safe channel. The trip up the river had to be timed carefully since entry to the harbour at Rochefort is through a lock which only opens for about an hour or less around high water. This results in queues of boats in the river outside waiting for the lock opening and then a procession into the harbour, often degenerating into chaos, but afterward resuming perfect peace.
Fortunately Follyfin entered alone on Wednesday 28 May, a day before the Ascension day holiday rush, and was happily berthed on (we afterwards learned) the Quai d'Honneur, with a grandstand view of all the shenanigans of the following day.
During our 3-day stay in Rochefort (nothing to do with the same-sounding name cheese, Roquefort), we imbibed a huge amount of French naval history. Without wishing to bore you, the reader, I will relate just a few of the most astonishing facts we learned here, copiously annotated with photographic evidence ...
1. Le Corderie Royale (Royal Ropeworks). Built 1666 and over 374 metres long, it was then the longest building in Europe. Conceived by one of Louis XIV's most talented engineers, François Blondel, its foundation was a wooden raft fashioned from many oak trees, to allow for the very marshy soil near the river. The building was burnt down by the Germans at the end of WWII and recently restored, at which time the raft was found still to be in tact. It is a splendid building, seen below from the river (this side specially adorned as it was the first view of visiting dignitaries),
but left rather plain on the opposite side, seen only by the workers ... the palm trees only added lately for the benefit of tourists. Inside there is a wonderful display of rope-making as it was done then. Huge anchor ropes, 200-300 metres long were made here.
2. L'Hermione: A replica of a traditional fully rigged frigate, it has been 12 years in the making and is due to sail across the Atlantic next season where it's original namesake took part in the American war of independence ... against the English.
It's length overall is 66 m, it's mainmast is over 47 m high, it weighs over 1000 tons (equivalent to 46 current containers) and the sail area is equivalent to 9 tennis courts. The crew of the original Hermione numbered 320 but the modern version will only have 75 young people to sail her. We have to hope they have done their homework when we see the spider's web of standing and running rigging involved!
3. Musée National de la Marine: a fascinating place where we spent a whole afternoon, aided by an excellent audio guide in English. Here we discovered that both the word 'mayonnaise' and the flower name 'begonia' (you will have to research these for yourself good reader!) originated in Rochefort! The set of surgical implements carried aboard a French naval vessel in those days was an eye opener. Thank heavens for keyhole surgery these days.
On Saturday evening, after a surfeit of sight-seeing, it was time to leave on the ebb tide. Once again we tied up on a buoy south-east of the Île d'Aix to wait for daylight before moving to our next port of call, St. Denis on the Île d'Oleron. How surprised were we to find we had caught some fish on the way down the river.
Okay okay, they are just tiddlers, none more than 2 cm in length, and they were sucked in through the engine filter ... but it's a start!
No comments:
Post a Comment